jeudi 1 mai 2014

Letters from the Northern Lands

27.07.XXXX

My
Love

I
have tried to find madness in fish. After one kilogram of mackerel
filet, deep-fried, I am not convinced this was the right choice.
Everything now smells of fish. My clothes, my body, my dishes and I.
Too much fish kills the fish. And me.

On
the other hand, it would not be wrong to call this experience a
mackerel-madness, and in that sense, I have won today a small
victory. Regarding fish, it shall be the last for the foreseeable
future. Not only because soon, I will be leaving the coast, but also
because I am (literally) sick of fish.

But
this experience also allowed me to study the madness of seagulls.
Constantly shrieking even at the best of times, the frenzy that
overcomes them when feeding in flocks on the mangled remains of our
catch is something else entirely. Screaming, flapping their wings
madly, their beaks red with blood, they fight over one fish carcass
when there are three more, not two meters away, and with no
competition. They pick them up, drop them into the sea only so that
the next of their kin can pick them up again. Fighting impressive
areal battles, they pursue their meal in single-minded madness, the
tastiest morsel always the one already in someone else's beak.

Great
masters of madness they are, the seagulls, and there is much we could
learn from them. But mad as we are, we shan't.